The Fed tends to focus on core prices, which exclude food and energy. That fact often riles up critics, who note that they can’t decide not to feed their families or refuel their cars. But the central bank doesn’t ignore those prices because they’re unimportant, but because they are volatile and don’t reflect the long-term trend. Some economists have noted that perhaps excluding food and energy isn’t the best way to correct for volatility. Even alternative measures show little threat of rising prices.

Some doubt those statistics because they’re provided by the government. A private group of economists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology created a separate series called the billion prices project that tracks hundreds of online retailers’ change in pricing. That index tracks the official figures pretty closely and also shows no inflation threat.

Still that’s an index created by eggheads. What does that mean to everyday Americans who can just feel prices are rising? Well, Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group, came up with another way to see if people are worried about rising costs. He tracked their Google searches.

“Americans are less worried about general levels of inflation than at any point in the last 5-8 years,” he wrote in a recent note. “We tried dozens of price-conscious terms in Google Trends, and included some representative findings after this note. Search terms such as ‘Cheap,’ ‘Low Priced,’ ‘Lowest Priced,’ ‘Bargain,’ ‘Discount’ and ‘Affordable’ appear in search queries no more now than at any point in the last few years. Some are in outright decline, others are static, but none are up substantially.”

Even these anecdotal reports jibe with the official data. There are some areas that have shown prices increasing faster than average inflation in recent years — health care and rents, for example. The Google data show that searches have been on the rise for “cheap rent” and “cheap doctors.”

A full examination of the data makes clear that inflation isn’t a threat. In fact, looking at markets’ and consumers’ expectation for inflation over the next 10 years — both are firmly contained — perhaps the Fed needs to be more worried that prices are climbing too slowly.

About Real Time Economics

Real Time Economics offers exclusive news, analysis and commentary on the U.S. and global economy, central bank policy and economics. Send news items, comments and questions to the editors and reporters below or email realtimeeconomics@wsj.com.